There were rumors of night-time guerrilla activity when I lived in Tucson, Ariz., during the 1980s. Under cover of darkness, people scurried around using chainsaws and flammable liquids to destroy billboards. Ed Abbey, the edgy desert author of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, was reportedly among them; so were some other founders of the […]
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Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
What the flock?
I just finished reading HCN’s Dec. 12th issue, and discovered, on the back page, within Betsy Marston’s letter-perfect column no less, the unexpected: an aggregation of sheep referred to as a “herd.” “Holy sufferin’ sheep dip,” I blurted. “How can it be?” But then as I backtracked through the same report, I discovered that I’d […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
From the Old World to the Old West: A review of The Little Bride
The Little BrideAnna Solomon314 pages, softcover: $15. Riverhead, 2011. Anna Solomon’s fascinating first novel The Little Bride begins in Russia in the 1880s, when Minna Losk, a 16-year-old orphan, signs up to become a mail-order bride. After the death of her father, Minna worked for a while as a maid for a once-wealthy woman. Now, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Welcome, Eric and Kati
Eric Strebel, our soft-spoken new Web developer, joined the HCN team Dec. 1. He’s been working with computers since 1978, when he got his first personal computer. Eric eventually developed his programming hobby into a livelihood. Prior to joining us, he freelanced and operated Mountain West Communication’s website for about a decade. Eric enjoys fishing, […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Detente in the rancher v. environmentalist grazing wars?
If you’ve been trolling the news recently, you might think that ranchers still reign supreme over the federal estate, despite the fact that the number of cattle and sheep on public lands has declined by more than half since the 1950s. In November, for example, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Huntsman: not worthy
Obama should ditch Vice President Joe Biden for Jon Huntsman in the 2012 presidential campaign? It is hard to believe that High Country News would suggest such a move (HCN, 12/26/11 & 1/09/12, “A Westerner for the White House”). First of all, Huntsman resigned as ambassador to China to run against the president who appointed […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
How much time does Congress spend discussing the issues you care about?
Ten months before the election, news outlets are already jammed with political jabber. One way to put it in perspective is to chart the attention Congress has paid to your particular issues over time. Capitol Words, an online visualization tool created by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, assembles the daily contents of the Congressional Record […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
Beauty and the Beast
It is a dead place — boned with black, sentinel tree trunks, veined with unspeakably polluted water, laid bare under a paste-white sky. There is no sense of space or time, only pure, absolute quiet. It is one of my favorite images — Uranium Tailings No. 12, taken at Ontario’s Elliot Lake in 1995, part […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2012: Billboard corporations use money and influence to override your vote
A former Green Mountain fire lookout tells his story
“Lightbulb” Winders recounts his experiences as the last lookout on Green Mountain, in the Glacier Peak Wilderness near Darrington, Washington.
Posted inJanuary 21, 2013: Special issue: Natural resources education
Colorado’s green(ish) gas baron
When the sun gets in Ed Warner’s eyes, he turns his chair – and his whole desk, too. Set into the floor in the middle of his home office, a giant turntable from an old mine quarry rotates the entire workspace, including a 7-foot-high wooden cabinet wall. The ingenious setup has appeared in Architectural Digest, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
China hearts cowboys
THE WEST AND CHINAIt’s no secret that many Germans adore the Old West, but who knew that prosperous second-home buyers in China would also succumb to “cowhide, antler chandeliers, saddle blankets, lodgepole chairs, wagon wheels, Navajo rugs, iron light fixtures, wildlife-scene fireplace screens, wooden snowshoes, leather throw pillows, horseshoes, Charles Russell prints and plaid curtains”? […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
No matter how long you live in your small town, you’ll never be a native
The woman behind the counter asked where I lived. It turns out she grew up in the very same small town, population 300. She said she had to leave it to find a job, moving to the nearest place with a population nearer 10,000.“So you must be the new trash that’s moving in,” she mused. […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
A Q&A with former Colorado National Monument head Joan Anzelmo
In 1976, fresh from the University of Maryland with degrees in French and Spanish, Joan Anzelmo began her National Park Service career greeting international tourists at the agency’s new Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t long before the former “city girl” came out West, where she spent most of her 35-year tenure, including […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Raymond Ansotegui and the art of artificially inseminating cattle
It’s an early June morning on Montana’s 60,000-acre Bair Ranch, north of the Crazy Mountains. Black cow-calf pairs dot the pastures under a frigid rain. It streams from the hats and soaks the chaps of the men and women who exit the bunkhouse, fully caffeinated and sated by steak and eggs. They are here to […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Do not sink teeth into animal testicles
MONTANABob Ream, chairman of the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission, was driving to north-central Montana just before sunrise to hunt deer, when a deer jumped in front of his car and made the trip unnecessary. The deer was a goner, “but only its hindquarter was damaged,” reports the Independent Record, “so Ream tagged it.” […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
The perilous journey of Wyoming’s migrating pronghorn
On a blustery spring day, I crouched behind sagebrush at the edge of the Green River in western Wyoming, waiting for pronghorn to pass by on their northern migration. Occasional snowflakes fluttered into the steel-colored water. I pulled my arms inside my down jacket, zipped to the chin. Hours went by. Then, across the river, […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Protecting wildlife corridors remains more theory than practice
updated Dec. 30, 3011 Every May for the past five years, Jackson Hole, Wyo., has celebrated the return of 300 or so Antilocapra americana to nearby Grand Teton National Park. The revelry is not just to honor the animals for completing their remarkable 120-mile-long seasonal migration. It also salutes a Herculean communal effort: the 2008 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
All I want for Christmas is a rifle
ARIZONAAlthough the Scottsdale Gun Club has yet to start selling Christmas cards showing baby Jesus cradling a machine gun in the manger, or the Magi bringing gifts of frankincense, myrrh and crates full of extra ammo, the club did offer its members a unique photo op: posing with Santa Claus while holding military-style rifles. Choices […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Boulder, Colo., votes for energy independence — from its utility
On election night this November in Boulder, Colo., under the stained-glass ceiling of the Hotel Boulderado, about 100 progressive-leaning voters crowded around a screen showing preliminary results. Early in the evening, the odds of the city breaking its ties with Minnesota-based corporate utility Xcel Energy to pursue locally produced, clean power seemed as dark as […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Is Colorado Springs the new Babylon?
“Is Phoenix the new Babylon?” resonates in Colorado Springs (HCN, 11/28/11). Colorado Springs Utilities, a city-owned full-service utility — gas, sewer, electricity and water — has committed $2.1 billion to build a pipeline to bring water to the city from Pueblo Reservoir, a project known as the Southern Delivery System. That amount does not include […]